If climate change impacts global food production. Who will be most affected?

Question

I'm interested in what people think the effects would be on rural/urban, third world/developed world populations.

Answer 1

http://www.pr-inside.com/the-peak-oil-crisis-will-not-r127787.htm
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Climate change will indeed have an impact, and production in all areas will be severely reduced while the gov't and farmers react to water level and temperature changes. Crops and entire systems will have to be completely altered to respond. Wheat will shift to corn, cattle will shift to goats. The external and inherent resistance to such changes will require massive amounts of capital and political will. Places that currently do not produce, like Yellowknife, will not in fact become a bread basket. Eco-systems, soil, and other supportive bioforms, not to mention water supply, do not appear overnight, and those areas will not be viable for food production for generations. And last I checked, the North has it's own very delicate eco-system that helps maintain the rest of the world. Pushing it out of way to grow crops is not sound management.

We have had the ability to produce enough food for everyone in the entire world for decades now. Canada alone has massive silos stuffed with grain, while we pay huge amounts every year for their upkeep. Grain is very difficult to store over long periods. It can blow up or rot or get eaten by vermin... However, according to the World Bank and other venerable international capitalist institutions, we are forbidden to give them away or even to sell them at less than world market prices. Wouldn't be fair to other food producing countries, doncha know... Rich countries are paying some of their farmers NOT to produce, or to fallow their fields, while others are paid less than the money it took to grow it. We are wasting incredible amounts of resources in spurious and inefficient food creation. Today, starvation is nearly entirely a distribution issue. Civil wars, new models of globalization instead of local subsistence, lack of roads, displacement, not being able to afford the current prices, deliberate population reduction... These are the primary problems today in fighting hunger. Climate change will affect production, but we can produce far less food before demand outstrips supply, so that is not the real index of trouble...

Distribution being the primary problem, the greatest threat in global hunger at the moment is Peak Oil. Massive amounts of oil is used at every stage in food production, processing, and distribution. It will be running out in a very short time, and we don't have to drain it to the last drop to feel the effects. Just a slowing down will put huge strain on all the world's trade, including that of food. Rich countries have spent most of their foreign policy money, military, and coercion to secure these resources for their own use. In the era of the 3000 mile salad, they will be the last to feel it's effects. Whining all the way about high prices and lack of choice and how it was never like this in the old days, by the time the rich countries' citizens notice there's a problem, it will be far, far too late. Everyone else will have been starving and fighting back to control their own resources for their own ppl, in active non-violence and later more violent methods, in their countries and then taking it to the rich in theirs.

Even if production is maintained or even increased, food isn't grown where ppl live. Look at how far your food comes from, and what will happen when transport is no longer cheap and readily available. Can you walk to get it, or take your bike? Where do you get your flour from, or your potatoes? Or your fruit? When even food produced by your own country no longer flows into your local market like a river on trucks and rail, what will you eat? Iraq isn't just about fueling American Humvees and the War machine. It's about insuring they eat. Even if everyone else doesn't.

Grow locally. Eat locally. It'll be the only thing that saves your bacon. As it were...

Answer 2

If the impact is sudden, almost all countries will be affected. However since the rich countries will have money to spend in counteracting the effects (except the UK cos we cant even deal with an inch of snow without it being a national crisis) I have to say its Africa and third world countries who will suffer most. I know this is gonna sound horrid, but its the 3rd world's apathy toward its own people and government corruption that are keeping them back. Maybe if they spent more on irrigation programmes and construction projects instead of petty civil wars and guns they'd get somewhere. Look at India and China, they were 3rd world countries not so long back and now theyre among the top industrial powers today, if they can do it, so can the Africans.

Answer 3

Clearly countries like Bangladesh. There are a combination of factors there which will cause a lot of death by starvation.

Poor country, unable to simply buy a lot of food. Rich countries will always have this escape strategy.

Located close to the Equator. Global warming will move precipitation away from the Equator, toward the poles.

Having a lot of farmland very close to sea level. It doesn't have to be submerged. One good inundation with salt water in a storm and it will be ruined.

Bangladesh is in serious trouble if we do nothing about global warming. When people are dying there of starvation rich countries won't be able to help. They'll be spending huge sums of money relocating people away from coasts, replacing stuff lost to flooding, and dealing with their own problems with agriculture and misplaced irrigation systems.

The result for countries like Bangladesh will also likely include war, as desperate people try to go to another country which has food.

You don't have to exaggerate the facts about global warming, like "the Earth will be destroyed" or "we're all gonna die". The reality is horrible enough. More here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL052735320070407
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf

Answer 4

Environmentalists are all different, you seem to have taken a report put together by a few researchers and imply all environmentalists agree on it and want legislation. We have an expresion for people who would wish to enforce such lmeasuress, they're called ecofacists. The article is of interest because it shows how important agriculture and diet is to the environment and offers useful information to those who wish to act, A high protien diet is preferable for warriiors and others of an equally demanding lifestyle.Most in the developed world on a high protien diet are relatively inactive, so a high protien diet causes obesity and heart disease, prime example; US. A vegan diet on the other hand reduces cancer and provides a balanced diet with all the vitamins and meinerals neccessary, prime example; traditional mediteranean and eastern quisines, now under threat from hamburgers :( It's the long chain omega 3 found in oily fish that improves intelligence, nothing else.

Answer 5

It would in many ways. There are irrigating populations which receive scant or no rainfall for a year or two. Then there are villages which are affected by flood and the crops are drowned. So it directly impacts food production where the cultivation is taken seriously but seasonally. Especially the 3rd world countries.

Answer 6

The poor will be affected the most. Rich people or rich countries will have to pay more for food but will always have enough, no matter where it has to be imported from of how much it might cost to grow locally, with more irrigation and greenhouses and whatever is needed. If the weather changes to make formerly fertile regions in the 3rd world barren, that will cause famine and refugees to flee.

Answer 7

Most affected will be the developing countries. Global warming will mean more arable land and a higher capacity for food production. Temperate zones will shift north wich will greatly improve growing conditions in northern Europe, Russia and Siberia, and Canada. This will cut the price of food and increase its availability.

Global cooling, on the other hand, will have a disasterous affect on poorer nations since food production will be drastically cut.

Answer 8

THE PEOPLE THAT WILL ACTUALLY DIE STRAIGHT OFF WILL BE IN AFRICA....but the rest of the World will sufer unbelievably..
UK will change..become colder and wetter due to the move of the sea currents..France will loose much of its South growing areas...Spain areas that are used for plantation will become desert...Australia will loose growing ground, become unbearably hot, and skin canecr will double in the next 5 years...it already has the worst in the World, India, swamped out with rain then starved in drought, USA...the culprits...will have the greatest divide of all....the haves and have nots will be seperated so much that the one half will starve....(so what's different) and the other will be fenced in for their own protection.....They will suffer from drought, fires, floods, and loose millions of lives. But mostly black, so the other half will not even notice, let alone help....see NEW ORLEANS.
America will need to decide that they can live without their AC and high juice cars....this is unlikely as they are a selfish race...so we are all buggered. China, with all its people wanting technology for the first time will not heed global warming....up to now per capita...they have not really contributed....so they don't see why it should be them making sacrifices....you can see their point....
SO WHAT DO YOU SUGEST??????
All American presidents have to be Freemasons....this helps with factory/business owning millionaires (NEARLY ALL MASONS)that need control over government legislation. making sure that no agreements are signed that will cost those companies dosh, ie making their factories low emision, carbon neutral, so its up to the yanks to vote for a president that can alter the nations thinking....oh yes...didn't they have one of those before...JFK....but he was too liberal, wanted equality or some such strange thing....so they bumped him off....so you need to vote in a president with bullet proof armour, to protect him from the CIA....so that he can change legislation and alter the World path re GLOBAL WARMING.
Can it be done.?...it would need a miracle.!

Answer 9

Interesting question and perhaps I should mention possible upsides rather than just gloom and doom. Vast areas of Canada and Russia which are presently too cold may become suitable for food production. Increased global temperatures may, in allowing the atmosphere to hold more water and increasing the energy of weather systems increase the width of the equatorial band of wet climate and bring more land into agricultural use in the tropics and sub tropics. This is not to deny there will be downsides but if we can adapt to the opportunities things may not be as bad as often painted.

Answer 10

If it gets a little warmer it will not affect most plants. Here in Texas it hasn't made it up to 100 this year and normally by now we would of had 16 100 deg. F. days. I think it is global cooling.